divisive

Prince of Peace. That’s one of the names by which we know Jesus. But actually, he made a critical clarification: that peace won’t come for us here on earth.

Luke 12:49-53 records Jesus saying this: : “‘I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’”

Peace on earth is a wonderful wish and a worthwhile goal, one we can achieve partially, maybe locally, maybe for a time. But earth as we know it will always, right up until the end of time, be a battleground. Satan will finally be defeated on the day the world is remade.

Jesus came as a disrupter; Satan had things going his way, and was well along toward his goal of controlling all of us. There wasn’t any way we could help ourselves, nothing we could do to get right with God. Jesus came to blow that up. He came to take his people, the remnant that God kept apart for him, away from the rest. He meant to divide us, the sheep from the goats, the saved from the lost, the elect from the damned.

It’s sad that too often that means dividing families and friends and sometimes even churches. But it’s amazing good news for us; God didn’t leave us in unity with the ones who bought Satan’s lies. He came to separate us from them.

That’s hard truth, because we want to like people. We want to get along. We want to fit in. We want to avoid conflict. And we’d prefer to pretend that no one (except the ones we hate) is actually damned.

I’ve been raised all my life to seek unity, but this morning I see that until Jesus comes again I should work for division. The church must be distinct from the world; gathering in the harvest means leaving the weeds behind. We can’t remain with the weeds, and we can’t bring them with us.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace, but he’s going to bring that peace by ending this world. It’s part of his grace that he gives us places and interludes of peace in the midst of this cosmic battle.